The Brutalist: More About America Than Architecture

Christopher Hawthorne argues that Brady Corbet’s film The Brutalist isn’t truly about architecture, despite its Bauhaus-inspired protagonist, László Tóth. Instead, the movie examines power, wealth, immigration, and American vanity, using Brutalist buildings as a cinematic lens rather than a subject.

While Tóth’s work mirrors the style of Marcel Breuer—hulking concrete forms and minimalist ornamentation—the film focuses on his exploitation by industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren and the broader societal forces shaping postwar America. Architecture becomes a MacGuffin; the real story critiques capitalism, American exceptionalism, and immigrant struggles.

Hawthorne notes that, though critics have lambasted the film’s architectural inaccuracies, its cinematic use of design heightens the narrative’s emotional and political impact, making The Brutalist a meditation on the human experience behind modernist concrete facades.